It's much the same temperature here as it was in Sicily, but already I'm missing those blue skies and sudden spring like turns in the weather. My first task this morning was to take a prescription renewal request in to the GP surgery, then a visit to St Michael's to catch up on news with the staff and with the Principal over a quick sandwich lunch up in a High Street coffee shop. He returned from Newfoundland this weekend and jet-lag notwithstanding is already very busy with work. Everything gets back into full swing tomorrow.
I then went out to look for a replacement flourescent tube for one of our kitchen units. It's an odd size and specification and I anticipate having trouble finding one. I visited an expert home lighting retailer Clare has found helpful in Cardiff, and although he didn't have the goods, he gave me a web address to search for information, also the address of a lighting wholesaler not too far away. No success, so it will mean hunting on line.
While I was out, I called into Staples thinking I would buy an ink cartridge for my ancient Samsung lazer printer, but the model no longer seems to be supported, so it would mean having to order one via the internet at top prices for old stock. Instead of doing this, I bought a discounted HP lazer printer of the multi-functional variety, for only a tenner more than the cost of a cartridge. It's a lot faster and has more print memory, and a bit of an indulgence really.
Then it was time to pop into town and visit the CBS office to pick up from where I left off five weeks ago. Work on the new Admiral Insurance tower block in the space next to Motorpoint Area has progressed considerably over the past month. When I left there was just a large excavated hole in the ground, its sides being re-inforced. Now the central stairway and lift tower is rising at a pace.
While I was away Ashley's computer hard drive failed, and although he was able to get it fixed and re-instate the system from the back-up I'd made a couple of years ago, he was just too busy to fiddle about with setting up email accounts all over again, a task made even more annoyingly difficult by BT's migration of their in-house email servers to Microsoft Exchange last autumn, with the consequent loss of several months of our email archive material.
I had difficulty configuring the Windows Mail client on his computer to work with the new system, as I was lacking the detail necessary. After a while, I was able to log in to the webmail and make it functional. With the necessary information to hand I configured Windows Mail to access Ashley's account on my computer for practice, and downloaded all his 187 emails from the past six weeks on to my laptop. I was furious with myself for failing to notice that the stupid default setting deleted emails from the host as they are downloaded to a pop3 account, so then it too me another hour to figure out how to send the emails back to his computer, and get the job done. The guys who design these programs simply don't think practically in a way that favours the end user.
On my way home, I called into Clas Ohlsen's hardware store in St David's Grand Arcade and saw that they have kitchen flourescent lighting tubes of the correct length for our set up, but I couldn't figure out if the socket configuraion was the same, so I couldn't buy with confidence. Meanwhile, Clare had gone on-line and found just the correct information about the flourescent tube in question. However, the phone signal in the depths of the store was insufficient for us to talk about it, or for me to access the web page on my office Blackberry. So it'll have to wait until tomorrow.
I got home before seven and cooked us a very pleasant fish paella with prawns and Vietnamese river cobbler, with onion, leek, butternut squash, carrot, red pepper and the juice of a whole lemon. It's the first paella I've cooked for six weeks, and it wasn't quite as spicy as my usual offerings, maybe reflecting a little some things learned by practice and experiment while I was fending for myself in Taormina?
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